Mother’s Day reprieve for A-level student facing deportation without family

Yashika Bageerathi is currently being held in detention and has been told she will have to move back to Mauritius (Picture: Menha Zola/PA Wire)

An A-level student facing deportation will no longer be on a flight scheduled to leave the country.

Yashika Bageerathi, 19, is currently being held in Yarl’s Wood detention centre and had been told she would be taken to Mauritius later today.

But as a legal team acting on behalf of her school, the Oasis Academy Hadley in north London, sought a High Court injunction, it was revealed the teenager would not be on a 5pm Air Mauritius flight leaving Hearthrow Airport tonight.

The flight has not been cancelled and it is uncertain why Yashika will not be on the flight.

Speaking from the immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire, the student said she just wanted to finish her A-levels and be with her mother.

‘I just want to be with my mum right now and celebrate Mother’s Day as we do every year because I know she is very special to me,’ she said.

‘We hope [home secretary] Theresa May and the Home Office will listen to us and do something to help,’ she said.

The sixth-form student came to Britain in 2011 with her mother and two siblings to escape a physically abusive relative.

The family claimed asylum last year but because of Yashika’s age, her application was considered separately and she now faces deportation alone.

An online petition asking home secretary Theresa May to intervene in the case has attracted over 160,000 signatures (Picture: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire)

‘Her mother is traumatised and upset with the latest news that she is going to lose her daughter and on Mother’s Day,’ explained Enfield Southgate MP David Burrowes.

Her friends and family want the decision reviewed so she can at least finish her A-level studies.

Hopes were initially raised when British Airways refused to take her on a flight on Tuesday, while students from her school started an online petition to keep her in the UK, which has so far attracted 163,000 signatures.